The climax
of my five-day trip through El Salvador – a visit to the El Imposible
National Park – was beginning to look like an existential pun. Benjamín
Rivera, 40, the guide-cum-driver, was desperate for me to see the bird
life and hike through the tropical forest – one of the few areas of true
wilderness left in this densely populated, intensively farmed country.

When we finally had all the tools for the trip, Rivera asked me if I wanted the scenic route or the fast road.

“The most direct route,” I said.

He
took the scenic route. Guides always know best, or so he had reminded
me during our road trip through Central America’s smallest country. It
had started 320km away in the east, with a motorboat ride from Nicaragua
to the port of La Unión.After welcoming us on board, Mario
Meléndez, 37, our captain, had run through the wildlife we passengers –
myself and three Swiss tourists – might see: manta rays, ospreys,
frigatebirds, dolphins. He showed us pictures of tree species and
mangroves, a diagram of an oyster-farming project we would pass, and
named the volcanoes we could see on every horizon.

He turned a
border crossing into a lovely half-day tour. We saw several of the
promised species, and got a quick introduction to Salvador’s turbulent
recent history. Meléndez was a child when civil war broke out in 1979.
He later escaped conscription – his father was an army recruiter – and
was able to work as a fisherman and outboard motor mechanic.

Meléndez
told me that half the islands’ populations had emigrated to the US and
those remaining lived off remesas – money wired from relatives. El
Salvador’s main sources of income are these remesas and foreign aid,
though as Central America’s most industrialised country it also
generates revenue from maquilas (clothing factories), coffee and sugar
cane. The question now is: can tourism play a part?

Many people were not as lucky as Meléndez during the conflict, in
which an estimated 75,000 lost their lives. The Oriente region’s hilltop
town of Perquín, where I spent my first night, was a centre of
resistance. Over coffee I spoke to Serafin Gómez Lima, 43, a former
child soldier who now spearheads tourism projects.

“After the
peace accord of 1992, we realised the war story could appeal to
visitors,” he said. “We organised a festival for Salvadoreans and then
opened the Museo de la Revolución.”

The museum is a rich if roughly assembled collection of war memorabilia, weapons and photographs of heroic-looking guerrillas. Stylish agitprop posters from the 1980s are a reminder of the support that the rebel movement received from leftwing populations in Europe and the US.I got my fill of dark tourism in Perquín and its environs – Rivera and Gómez Lima insisted on taking me to the interment of some victims’ remains in nearby El Mozote – but the experience was engaging. Being a traveller in a recent war zone isn’t voyeurism but, for Salvadoreans, an act of witness.

Suchitoto is El Salvador’s poster city. It is cobbled, quaint and at weekends fills with visitors from the capital 50km away. The word “colonial” is thrown around loosely in Latin America but some of the buildings here are the real thing – including the former mansion where I stayed, Los Almendros de San Lorenzo, built in 1805 for Spanish landowners.

Opened in 2005 after 17 months of restoration work, the hotel’s six rooms (and separate honeymoon villa), pool, restaurant and palm-tree-filled patio cover a city block. Owned by Pascal Lebailly, 53, a French former fashion events organiser, and his Salvadorean partner Joaquín Rodezno, 60 – who used to be the country’s ambassador to Paris, Rome and Brussels – it is decorated with Salvadorean artworks and high-value craft pieces. The men are now ambassadors for a country they regard as safe, unspoilt by tourism and misrepresented by the media.

“A lot of people are interested in El Salvador now that Panama and Costa Rica have become expensive, especially for visiting Americans,” said Lebailly. “Here they find everything they want at affordable rates.“It’s time to correct the country’s image. Local media only report crime statistics and violence and that’s what foreign media pick up. But the data are never analysed. None of the crimes affect tourists and none of the reports reflect the friendliness of the people.”

Over the past nine years, Lebailly and Rodezno have seen a “slow but steady” increase in visitors, including independent travellers from the US, Canada, Colombia and Brazil and small tour groups from western Europe. Russians and Polish travellers are also beginning to arrive.“As the country opens up to travellers, service gets better,” said Lebailly. “But there’s no mass-market tourism here.”